For my entire life, I have had dizzy spells. They primarily hit me when I stand up, though not at once. I take a few steps, sometimes go twenty feet or so, and then I can feel it coming. My ears start to buzz and dots creep in around the sides of my eyes. I learned early on that the best thing I can do once it starts is to grab onto something and stay very still until it passes. If I'm not close to any support, I can usually wait it out if I don't move at all.
Stress can make the dizzy spells worse, bringing them on when I haven't changed levels. That's when I know it's time to find some quiet time.
The last time I fainted, I was about 14. I got up out of bed and started over to my closet when it hit. I had enough time to move just a bit closer to my bed and to half-lower-myself/half-fall onto the mattress. Things went dark for just a few seconds.
The last time I fainted, at least, until this week. Several nights ago, I wasn't sleeping well anyway, and then Zee started to get into some dishes. I got out of bed in order to see what he was doing, but only got as far as my dresser before the dots started. My sight went completely as I gripped the dresser, and then my knees started to buckle. Sheer will, and little else, kept me upright.
And then a couple mornings ago, I was enjoying family time in bed. I'd already gotten up a couple times, so I thought nothing of getting up again and heading to the bathroom. I got to the vanity when it started. Again, my sight was gone as I grabbed the vanity. But it didn't pass.
Next thing I knew, I was on the floor, my feet scrabbling to gain purchase again. Trillian was there within a second or two. I would say that I just sort of slid to the floor, but Trillian says it was the thud that brought her in.
Now I tend towards lowish blood pressure anyway and have long recognized this as responsible for the worst of my dizziness. Since gaining weight and having Scooter, it's been closer to normal/low-normal, so the recent severity of my dizzy spells has been worrisome.
When we got to my in-laws', I borrowed a blood pressure cuff and discovered that it was about 10 points lower (both systolic and diastolic) than the last time I had it measured. Which doesn't surprise me all that much since I get involuntarily tense anytime a professional takes my blood pressure. The lowest reading came in the morning, before I'd even sat up: 88/58, which is officially low. My pulse, too, has been sitting around 60, sometimes lower, which is what one might expect to see with an elite athlete. (Hint: I am not an elite athlete.)
So, on the off chance, I started googling the various supplements I am taking--suggested by my endocrinologist in order to fight my low-level, chronic inflammation--along with low blood pressure. Turns out that in general anything that will fight inflammation will also lower blood pressure. Omega-3s and boswellia both have a mild impact on blood pressure. The main culprit, however, appears to be the magnesium I am taking, not directly for inflammation, but to improve neural and muscular functioning. It calms down misfires and improves the efficiency of many biochemical reactions throughout the body. That first part... that's why it can be so powerful in lowering blood pressure. It is frequently used for treating pre-eclampsia.
I'll be trying to get into the doctor tomorrow--somehow the whole fainting thing has convinced Trillian I should. Not sure if I'll get any closer to an answer. But in the meantime, I've stopped taking the magnesium and boswellia and have cut the Omega-3s back to a regular dose. It would be nice to stay upright tomorrow morning.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Dog training
Dog training me, that is.
Zee and I have started going to dog obedience classes once a week. And I'm already counting down the weeks until we're done.
I knew going in that the main point of obedience class is to train the owner to handle the dog. I get that, understand the philosophy. But the execution is painful for me.
A roomful of dogs, several of them barking, nobody I know, individual practice in front of everyone.
And my dog--usually calm, focused on me, intent, eager to please, quick to learn--is so distracted and excited by all the dogs that he can barely stop whining or wiggling. He has been dubbed "the hyper dog" and the teachers seem convinced that I do no work with him in between classes.
My goals in doing all of this are to bond further with Zee and to get him to follow a few basic commands, nothing fancy.
A few more weeks, and even if Zee doesn't officially pass the class, I'll count it a win if I don't die of embarrassment.
Zee and I have started going to dog obedience classes once a week. And I'm already counting down the weeks until we're done.
I knew going in that the main point of obedience class is to train the owner to handle the dog. I get that, understand the philosophy. But the execution is painful for me.
A roomful of dogs, several of them barking, nobody I know, individual practice in front of everyone.
And my dog--usually calm, focused on me, intent, eager to please, quick to learn--is so distracted and excited by all the dogs that he can barely stop whining or wiggling. He has been dubbed "the hyper dog" and the teachers seem convinced that I do no work with him in between classes.
My goals in doing all of this are to bond further with Zee and to get him to follow a few basic commands, nothing fancy.
A few more weeks, and even if Zee doesn't officially pass the class, I'll count it a win if I don't die of embarrassment.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Small victories and a lesson in assumptions
My letter to the editor should be published in the next day or two. After emailing it, I received confirmation of receipt and a request for my phone number. This didn't surprise me since my hometown newspaper also required some sort of verification before publishing a letter.
Now the local paper is generally a conservative paper with little substance--a small-town paper with only a handful of staff, sort of standard. That I hadn't heard back yesterday or today after emailing my phone number had convinced me that while they would eventually publish my letter, they were not exactly enthusiastic about it. Since I had been on the phone for other things, I decided to initiate the call so that this wouldn't drag out.
So imagine my surprise when, after identifying myself, the editor said, "And I want you to know I agree with you completely."
I relayed this to Trillian, who was also shocked. In a good way.
After looking at today's paper, I can't help but wonder, however, if the original letter writer has been doing some of my work for me. Obviously I hadn't been paying attention to who was writing these letters before. But now I think that this man must write at least one letter a week. Most of them appear to be ranty and make odd comparisons. So maybe I didn't need to address his statement specifically; there's a good chance most people here know to skip over those letters.
But at least it got me to submit something on domestic partnerships. And I found out that there are some supporters in places I wouldn't have expected.
Now the local paper is generally a conservative paper with little substance--a small-town paper with only a handful of staff, sort of standard. That I hadn't heard back yesterday or today after emailing my phone number had convinced me that while they would eventually publish my letter, they were not exactly enthusiastic about it. Since I had been on the phone for other things, I decided to initiate the call so that this wouldn't drag out.
So imagine my surprise when, after identifying myself, the editor said, "And I want you to know I agree with you completely."
I relayed this to Trillian, who was also shocked. In a good way.
After looking at today's paper, I can't help but wonder, however, if the original letter writer has been doing some of my work for me. Obviously I hadn't been paying attention to who was writing these letters before. But now I think that this man must write at least one letter a week. Most of them appear to be ranty and make odd comparisons. So maybe I didn't need to address his statement specifically; there's a good chance most people here know to skip over those letters.
But at least it got me to submit something on domestic partnerships. And I found out that there are some supporters in places I wouldn't have expected.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Tangled thoughts on religion and being gay
It feels as though a whole host of my thoughts for a couple days have been revolving around religion (or lack thereof) and being gay. Even when I'm not actively contemplating those two topics, something will leap up to remind me of their intersection.
Take, for instance, the recent news about new allegations against Reverend Ted Haggard. Turns out that the male escort he frequented (and bought drugs from) was not his only gay relationship; he also had a cash-for-sex affair with a young (early 20s) church volunteer. Oh, the mind boggles. Not because the man might be gay, but because of the way it manifested for him. Notice that all of his gay relationships (that we know about so far) involve paying for the sex that is so shameful to him, per what his religion tells him. I can't figure out if paying for it was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt or if the prostitution angle would make the gay angle pale in comparison. What I do know, though I won't go into it now, is that the strict prescriptions of religion can do so much damage.
Haggard aside, we're looking at the possibility of some domestic partner recognition in our community, and this is the primary reason I've been so focused on that point where issues of religion and being gay swirl around each other. I've been in the throes of letter-writing and will be sending several off tomorrow. Two are the standard letters to elected officials, including the reproach that both of them ignored my earlier missives on the topic, about which I am not impressed. Both are on record as against domestic partnerships; one specifically has cited his religion as his reason for opposing previous attempts to implement this. I doubt I'll change their minds, but the votes may be there without them.
The third letter is the one in which I have a more personal investment. It is a letter to the editor of our local rag, which absolutely everyone in town seems to read. I was compelled to write it after a throw-away line in another letter to the editor in which the writer suggested that domestic partnerships are 'amoral' and something being pushed by people from out-of-state. And so I wrote my letter to counter that second part explicitly while working against that first one more subtly (as in, emphasizing the importance of family in this issue).
The intersection with religion comes both from the loaded issue of morality and what I know about the author of the first letter. I've met him before and suspected, from a number of observations, that he is Catholic. A quick search showed me that he is not only Catholic, but staunchly, emphatically, and inflexibly so. Thus, I am probably right to read into 'amoral' all that I initially did.
But this is also where it crosses into a very sensitive territory. See, that author is the father of one of my son's classmates. Even trickier, it's the one kid with whom my son has a true, reciprocal friendship, one I would very much like to encourage since there are so many kids in his class who are quick to tease him for his differences. I hope that we can all be adults and separate our political and religious beliefs from our sons' friendship. Guess we'll see when we offer to have a playdate here.
In all of this, I find the religious/gay cocktail already so volatile that I hesitate to add in my own atheism. I worry about how that additional element might shut down all discussion.
Hang on for a minute while I set this up: I'm laying some groundwork for us to start trying to have another kid. Both Trillian and I still want two, but since almost a year's worth of doctors' appointments and blood tests have yielded little new information, the possibility of more miscarriages weighs heavily in our thoughts. Recently we decided that adoption is a possibility. Due to our particular situation, however, it is likely we would go the private route. So being me, I did some online searches and looked at how one would go about this.
Being in a same-sex couple does not appear to be too much of a barrier, per se, in private adoptions. There are plenty of prospective parent profiles and success stories. But it's hard to miss the fact that so many of these couples make explicit mention of the important role of religion in their family. So how conspicuous would it be to omit this? Notice that I'm not even thinking of including 'atheist' or any of its gentler synonyms ('humanist,' 'secular,' and others)--not that I'd be able to lie about this if asked directly.
OK, so that's not as immediate of a concern as the domestic partnerships, so it's a question that I can put on the back burner for now. Not that it will stop me from continuing to ponder how it is that I cannot untangle religion and being gay, even though they do not seem that they should logically overlap so thoroughly.
Take, for instance, the recent news about new allegations against Reverend Ted Haggard. Turns out that the male escort he frequented (and bought drugs from) was not his only gay relationship; he also had a cash-for-sex affair with a young (early 20s) church volunteer. Oh, the mind boggles. Not because the man might be gay, but because of the way it manifested for him. Notice that all of his gay relationships (that we know about so far) involve paying for the sex that is so shameful to him, per what his religion tells him. I can't figure out if paying for it was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt or if the prostitution angle would make the gay angle pale in comparison. What I do know, though I won't go into it now, is that the strict prescriptions of religion can do so much damage.
Haggard aside, we're looking at the possibility of some domestic partner recognition in our community, and this is the primary reason I've been so focused on that point where issues of religion and being gay swirl around each other. I've been in the throes of letter-writing and will be sending several off tomorrow. Two are the standard letters to elected officials, including the reproach that both of them ignored my earlier missives on the topic, about which I am not impressed. Both are on record as against domestic partnerships; one specifically has cited his religion as his reason for opposing previous attempts to implement this. I doubt I'll change their minds, but the votes may be there without them.
The third letter is the one in which I have a more personal investment. It is a letter to the editor of our local rag, which absolutely everyone in town seems to read. I was compelled to write it after a throw-away line in another letter to the editor in which the writer suggested that domestic partnerships are 'amoral' and something being pushed by people from out-of-state. And so I wrote my letter to counter that second part explicitly while working against that first one more subtly (as in, emphasizing the importance of family in this issue).
The intersection with religion comes both from the loaded issue of morality and what I know about the author of the first letter. I've met him before and suspected, from a number of observations, that he is Catholic. A quick search showed me that he is not only Catholic, but staunchly, emphatically, and inflexibly so. Thus, I am probably right to read into 'amoral' all that I initially did.
But this is also where it crosses into a very sensitive territory. See, that author is the father of one of my son's classmates. Even trickier, it's the one kid with whom my son has a true, reciprocal friendship, one I would very much like to encourage since there are so many kids in his class who are quick to tease him for his differences. I hope that we can all be adults and separate our political and religious beliefs from our sons' friendship. Guess we'll see when we offer to have a playdate here.
In all of this, I find the religious/gay cocktail already so volatile that I hesitate to add in my own atheism. I worry about how that additional element might shut down all discussion.
Hang on for a minute while I set this up: I'm laying some groundwork for us to start trying to have another kid. Both Trillian and I still want two, but since almost a year's worth of doctors' appointments and blood tests have yielded little new information, the possibility of more miscarriages weighs heavily in our thoughts. Recently we decided that adoption is a possibility. Due to our particular situation, however, it is likely we would go the private route. So being me, I did some online searches and looked at how one would go about this.
Being in a same-sex couple does not appear to be too much of a barrier, per se, in private adoptions. There are plenty of prospective parent profiles and success stories. But it's hard to miss the fact that so many of these couples make explicit mention of the important role of religion in their family. So how conspicuous would it be to omit this? Notice that I'm not even thinking of including 'atheist' or any of its gentler synonyms ('humanist,' 'secular,' and others)--not that I'd be able to lie about this if asked directly.
OK, so that's not as immediate of a concern as the domestic partnerships, so it's a question that I can put on the back burner for now. Not that it will stop me from continuing to ponder how it is that I cannot untangle religion and being gay, even though they do not seem that they should logically overlap so thoroughly.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Bandy-legged
I should and want to write about the majesty of the day. Our TV was glued to CNN for almost the entire day, and I shed more than a few tears. (Even Trillian cried, and that is not common!) But...
Holy Hell, my legs no longer work properly!
It's not even the shredding I've been doing courtesy of Jillian Michaels. Oddly, that has been killing my arms, but not so much my legs, even after increasing the depths of my squats and such (the real reason not to do this with an audience).
No, I had my first ballet class again after a month's break.
I did a couple of mini-barres during the break. And both times my legs were sore afterwards. I can already tell I'm headed there in the morning.
In the meantime, my legs feel as though they're too long and I just can't get my body far enough off the ground to walk with a normal gait. Gravity is not my friend.
Holy Hell, my legs no longer work properly!
It's not even the shredding I've been doing courtesy of Jillian Michaels. Oddly, that has been killing my arms, but not so much my legs, even after increasing the depths of my squats and such (the real reason not to do this with an audience).
No, I had my first ballet class again after a month's break.
I did a couple of mini-barres during the break. And both times my legs were sore afterwards. I can already tell I'm headed there in the morning.
In the meantime, my legs feel as though they're too long and I just can't get my body far enough off the ground to walk with a normal gait. Gravity is not my friend.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Green: BPA, revisited
Remember my big, long post on bisphenol-a a little over a year ago? Remember how I got my own troll? We laughed, we got indignant, we closed comments. Good times.
Mostly I was amused that an industry talking head was so intent on yelling me down. It seemed like a lot of effort to deal with a very small time blogger's take on the issue. At the time, I argued as best as I could with the information I had; I knew that the reports he cited were spinning the data and that there was much more out there to vindicate my position, but I didn't have the time or resources to track it down right then.
And then earlier this week, I found Trillian's copy of Fast Company sitting on my chair. (When she has airline miles that are about to expire, she gets magazine subscriptions. We also get The Economist and Martha Stewart Living. I can create festive decorations out of depressing retirement account statements!) It was open to an article, "The Real Story Behind BPA."
It took me a while to get through the whole thing. The article is dense with information, and I had to put it down every time my blood pressure rose too much. But there it was, the information I knew existed. If you get the chance, go read the whole thing. Really, it's worth the time! But let me highlight some of the points I wish I'd had at my fingertips last year.
Issues of methodology:
I'd be lying if I claimed not to get some enjoyment out of saying, "I told you so." (Trillian would call me out on that immediately. And it's not like I'm saying it to my usual readers--we'll see if the troll returns.) But this is one time when I wish I hadn't been quite so right, because the whole issue is quite disillusioning and a bit scary.
Time to go clean out the pantry and try to figure out alternatives to various canned items.
Mostly I was amused that an industry talking head was so intent on yelling me down. It seemed like a lot of effort to deal with a very small time blogger's take on the issue. At the time, I argued as best as I could with the information I had; I knew that the reports he cited were spinning the data and that there was much more out there to vindicate my position, but I didn't have the time or resources to track it down right then.
And then earlier this week, I found Trillian's copy of Fast Company sitting on my chair. (When she has airline miles that are about to expire, she gets magazine subscriptions. We also get The Economist and Martha Stewart Living. I can create festive decorations out of depressing retirement account statements!) It was open to an article, "The Real Story Behind BPA."
It took me a while to get through the whole thing. The article is dense with information, and I had to put it down every time my blood pressure rose too much. But there it was, the information I knew existed. If you get the chance, go read the whole thing. Really, it's worth the time! But let me highlight some of the points I wish I'd had at my fingertips last year.
Issues of methodology:
- Toxicology. In this model, the issue is to define the threshold of significant harm. Experiments in this vein feed huge doses to the test subjects, seeking the point at which organ failure, cancer, and other things (like death) happen. The current acceptable level of BPA has been set using this model. If you go back to my old post, you'll also see that this is the model referred to by my troll.
- Endocrinology. This model focuses on changes caused by small doses of chemicals that mimic hormones. And since BPA has recognized estrogenic properties, it seems reasonable to expect this to be the accepted model of study. But it's not, at least as far as government studies are concerned.
- "Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted -- 14 in all -- has found no such effects."
- The first studies of BPA's effects at low doses were inspired by multiple experiments in which unexpected results were traced back to the use of polycarbonate items (flasks, petri dishes, cages).
- vom Saal examined the interaction of BPA with human blood and realized that it needed further study. In an experiment where he fed pregnant mice doses of BPA "25,000 times lower than the EPA's toxic threshold," male offspring had enlarged prostates.
- vom Saal's findings have been replicated multiple times by other scientists. Nonetheless, industry often refers to his experiment as unreplicated, a blatant lie.
- "Others have found impacts on sperm production, testes development, and mammary-gland tissue, as well as behavioral disorders including hyperactivity, aggressiveness, and impaired learning."
- Tyl performed two experiments, the most commonly cited in the industry, claiming BPA as safe. In the first experiment, she used a strain of rats (CD Sprague-Dawley) that "can withstand a dose of synthetic estrogen more than 100 times greater than what a female human can tolerate." In the second, she used mice, but they were fed a type of food shown to "mask the effects of estrogens like BPA." Even then, her results show male mice with enlarged prostates.
- Government reports have officially based on reviews of the available literature. But a closer look at these reports shows that these are not even close to being unbiased. There's a big, long explanation in the article about how much of this work was outsourced to a consulting firm that, conveniently, does a lot of industry work and has frequently had questionable conflicts of interest.
I'd be lying if I claimed not to get some enjoyment out of saying, "I told you so." (Trillian would call me out on that immediately. And it's not like I'm saying it to my usual readers--we'll see if the troll returns.) But this is one time when I wish I hadn't been quite so right, because the whole issue is quite disillusioning and a bit scary.
Time to go clean out the pantry and try to figure out alternatives to various canned items.
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